The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The typical business model of television advertisers is to pay networks and broadcasters fees for placing commercials in specific commercial timeslots available during airings of certain televisions shows. The advertisers select television shows that they believe their target audience will view. For example, if the advertiser is an auto manufacturer that wants to advertise its latest pickup truck, the advertiser may pay a large fee to a network to have its commercial aired during the first quarter of an NFL football game because the advertiser believes that the viewers of the football game are in its target audience.
A local car dealer may pay a fee to the local broadcaster of the same NFL football game to have his commercial aired during a time slot in the football game that is set aside for local broadcasters.
Both the network and local broadcasters base their fees on their prediction of how popular the television show will be. The more popular the show, the higher the fee. Additionally, certain segments of a show may carry a higher fee just because of the content in the particular segment. For example, the last segment of a Survivor show may have a higher advertisement fee because the network believes that more viewers will tune into that segment of the show to see which participant gets voted off the island.
The advent of digital video recorders (DVRs) has caused advertisers to question the value of paying the fees charged by the broadcasters. DVRs allow viewers to maneuver anywhere within a recorded portion of a television show. Using that capability, a viewer can easily skip over commercial breaks in television shows. All a viewer has to do is delay watching a live television show for 15 minutes and the DVR will have enough of the television show recorded to enable the viewer to start watching the beginning of the television show and have enough of the television show recorded ahead of his viewing position to skip all of the commercial breaks within a one-hour television show.
This places the networks and local broadcasters in a position where their timeslots for advertisements are not as valuable as before. The advertisers now have to decide if it is worth the expense to place advertisements in a media where the viewers are prone to skipping their advertisements.